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	<title>MicroISV Central</title>
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	<link>http://microisvcentral.com</link>
	<description>The latest happenings around the MicroISV community</description>
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		<title>Smart Bear Live 4: Nick from PinfoB.com at AZ Disruptors</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/smartbear/~3/oyDGP30Tx4U/sb-live-4.html</link>
		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/smartbear/~3/oyDGP30Tx4U/sb-live-4.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 May 2012 13:45:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>wpengine</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SBLive]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.asmartbear.com/?p=889</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We&#8217;re back in gear with the podcast! We&#8217;ll be more regular now.  Here&#8217;s the deets if you&#8217;re unfamiliar with how this works. Audio attached here, downloadable on iTunes or below, and transcript below. Listen to this episode with Nick from PinfoB.com to learn how to tell customers no. Sign up for AppSumo's daily deals specifically for web...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><iframe
src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://blog.asmartbear.com/sb-live-4.html&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=80&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=25" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:80px; height:25px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe> <script type="text/javascript">tweetmeme_url = "http://blog.asmartbear.com/sb-live-4.html";
tweetmeme_source = 'asmartbear';
tweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly';</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script> </p><p>We&#8217;re back in gear with the podcast! We&#8217;ll be more regular now.  <a
href="http://smartbearlive.com" >Here&#8217;s the deets</a> if you&#8217;re unfamiliar with how this works.</p><p>Audio attached here, downloadable on iTunes or below, and transcript below.</p><p>Listen to this episode with <a
href="http://twitter.com/pinfob">Nick</a> from <a
href="http://pinfob.com">PinfoB.com</a> to <strong>learn how to tell customers no</strong>.</p><h3><b>Transcript</b></h3><div
style="float:right; margin: 0 0 3ex 3em; width: 185px;"> <i>Automated <a
href="http://www.speechpad.com" >transcription services</a> provided by:</i><br><a
href="http://www.speechpad.com" ><img
title="Speechpad Transcription Services" src="http://speechpad.com/img/customers/web/SpeechpadLogo.png" alt="Speechpad – Transcription Services" width="185" height="45" /></a></div> <i><br
/> Announcer:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Welcome to Smart Bear Live with Jason Cohen. In this episode, Jason speaks to Nick from PinfoB.com at the AZ Disruptors Kickoff meeting in December with co-host, Hamid Shojaee.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;The name of the company is PinfoB.com.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, it&#8217;s certainly a very complicated company because the name is difficult to even spell. Lucky for you, domain names are not case-sensitive or you&#8217;d be sunk already, right?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Right. Right.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;PinfoB? Well, I don&#8217;t know, fob sounds like freight on board, which is where you&#8217;d get things delivered. And so, I guess PinfoB is something that locates where all those things are so that when drivers are going around making their deliveries like UPS, but also other guys, they know where to go, they&#8217;ve got it on their mobile devices and it optimizes their routes.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Wow. No. However, I think I&#8217;m now going to find that company and sell them the name or I&#8217;m going to go start it. That was great.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;All right. What is PinfoB?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;PinfoB, it actually stands for personal information broker, which is what we do.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Okay.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;And so, we take your personal and consumer information and then we sell it, but then we give you the money.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Right. That&#8217;s interesting.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Yeah. And so, the benefit to the customer is that they get a little bit of money. It won&#8217;t be more than like $20 to $25 a month, but then they also, because we know a lot about them, they won&#8217;t get junk mail from us, they&#8217;ll get actually targeted relevant stuff, offers, deals, etc. And then on the client side, we can super, super target e-mail campaigns and whatever other things.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Yeah, we get that part. That&#8217;s super. They&#8217;ve opted in and you have all their information and it&#8217;s probably accurate. They&#8217;re not just guessing because my grandma gave me a subscription to, what was it, it was that weird little thin magazine, you know what I&#8217;m talking about.</p> <i><p>Hamid:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Lighthouse? Highlights?</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Highlights? Oh that&#8217;s a good one, and all of a sudden we got sweepstakes. I was put in a category of: I must be a senior because you can&#8217;t possibly read this stuff if you&#8217;re not over 67 and so I just got sweepstakes from then on. Hopefully, you can be more targeted than that.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Yeah, absolutely.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;It sounds like people do this to you anyway, and so it sounds like life proceeds as before except you make $20 a month, which I guess is better?.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Right.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you have any control over this beyond that?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Well yes, our members have control over everything. So they can control whether or not it&#8217;s e-mail, voice messages, whether it&#8217;s text messages, however, they want to get contacted, and they choose what they&#8217;re giving us and what they&#8217;re not giving us, so we can really target it. So really it&#8217;s just half of the benefit is the money, the other half is information about stuff you want.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Okay. And what&#8217;s the question?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;The question was: How do you know when to tell customers no.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Like what?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;So that&#8217;s both sides, so we have really kind of client sides, so we try to do everything we can to make our clients as happy as they can possibly be.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Which client?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;So clients would be the advertisers.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Advertisers. Okay.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;And they say we want to do this, that and the other thing, and some of it just isn&#8217;t what we do. And so, we want to tell them no, but we also want to be accommodating.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;When you say it&#8217;s not what you do, do you mean it kind of crosses some boundary of personal this and that, or it literally is features and things that are not your business?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;It&#8217;s both. The personal boundaries, really we kind of cover that because really for us we&#8217;re pretty firm about what we can and can&#8217;t do with our members&#8217; information, and we don&#8217;t bend any rules there. The other side though is features and that&#8217;s where because we&#8217;re fairly early on, we&#8217;re in a Beta and we&#8217;re still trying to figure things out.</p><p>So we have an idea in our mind of what is good for them, but really we know that they know what&#8217;s good for them as well. Somewhere there&#8217;s that kind of crisscross where they want these crazy features that are going to be a lot for us and may be specific to them.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;The first rule is that customers do not know how to tell you what features they need. They will tell you they do not know how to do that. I mean, don&#8217;t you agree that just doing things like designing a UI and or what features are good and estimating all that is itself a combination of art and science that very few human beings who are trained in it and have experience can do?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Yeah.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;And here&#8217;s somebody that runs the mail-order section of Walmart and they&#8217;re going to be able to design it? They definitely can&#8217;t. What they&#8217;re doing when they tell you a feature is they are taking a need or a pain or something that they actually want, and then they&#8217;re attempting to translate it for you.</p><p>What they&#8217;re actually doing is obscuring what you want to know, which is that underlying need or pain or value that they&#8217;re trying to get out of it. For example, they may think, if I had access to this data, or if I had this report in this other system or whatever, then I could be twice as effective or I could do this in one hour instead of eight, or I could reach more people or I could make my target or make more money, whatever.</p><p>So they ask you for some export feature in some bizarre thing you&#8217;d never heard of, but that&#8217;s not really what they want. They want the data in their mailer or sales force or something. So when they ask for a feature, you can just immediately go back and say &#8220;Wow, that sounds really interesting. Why is it that you want that feature? What is it going to do for you? What are you going to do once this feature is there?&#8221;</p><p>It depends on the feature what your follow-up question is. But you&#8217;re trying to dig back into the root thing that is either a problem for them or a perceived value that they have. And sometimes, by the way, it&#8217;s perceived value only, so reports are a good example. They say I need a report that shows me this. And you start digging, and there isn&#8217;t really any value in that. It really doesn&#8217;t tell them anything. It&#8217;s really not actionable. It&#8217;s just vanity metrics but they want it. Right?</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Right, that&#8217;s exactly it.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Right, so what do they think is valuable, whether they&#8217;re right or not, and the more right they are, oh boy, because now we&#8217;re all on board. But even so, it could be a report that&#8217;s vanity and you know that, but you&#8217;re not going to train them on lean start up, are you? So just ignore the feature, in a sense; only use it as a foil to get deeper.</p><p>Just like you take a resume and you don&#8217;t look at it and go, &#8220;Wow, you were in software development for five years. That&#8217;s fantastic.&#8221; No, it&#8217;s just a foil to start asking questions. Oh, what did you do about this? You said you have this technology, well then, tell me this deep thing. Oh, I don&#8217;t really know that. Well, you listed it on your resume. That&#8217;s what the resume&#8217;s for, a foil. To get into the truth. So are these feature requests.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;That&#8217;s a great point.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;And you probably don&#8217;t have that many clients right now, anyway</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;No.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;And so, you have the time and desire and so do they, hopefully, to have these deep conversations. If you have 2,000 of them, maybe you can&#8217;t have this kind of conversation, but you still can and so you should.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Right, right. Yeah and we definitely should. Our problem is that we only have a few and the ones that we have we really like, and we have them because it&#8217;s kind of a two-way communication. Getting new ones that aren&#8217;t really willing to do that, I guess, is where we run into more of a problem. But maybe the answer is we don&#8217;t need them yet. That&#8217;s the wrong kind of client for us right now if they don&#8217;t want to get more into it.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Not only do you not need them, you don&#8217;t want them because they will take some time and they&#8217;re not contributing back to you. You need people that will contribute back in the sense of working with you so that you can improve it for real.</p><p>Having said there, there definitely is such a thing as a customer that signs up and they don&#8217;t complain. They don&#8217;t ask for stuff. They&#8217;re just happy. That&#8217;s okay. You could have that now. It&#8217;s not helping you to learn, but it&#8217;s certainly better than not having that customer.</p><p>So I think you can still say yes to those folks but if they run into trouble and they&#8217;re not willing to discuss why, then you also have to be willing to say &#8220;Hey guys, I&#8217;ll tell you what, maybe we&#8217;re just not in the right place yet. You obviously have some interest in this, we&#8217;re obviously not quite there yet. You don&#8217;t have any time, it seems, to help us through that. We understand that, too; we&#8217;re busy, too. Why don&#8217;t we just suspend this? We&#8217;ll come back in six months when we have something new, and we&#8217;ll talk again.&#8221; And you can totally do that in a nice way and end it or suspend it, really.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Yeah. Suspend. That&#8217;s good.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;But you&#8217;re right, if you only have two or three people giving you advice, you are getting idiosyncratic advice and that is a problem. And, of course, the only solution is more people. The other solution is to only look at things that all three of them say. And anything that one person says, it may be right, but you wouldn&#8217;t know one way or another with the one person. So you just don&#8217;t act yet.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;I&#8217;ll cross my fingers for when they all agree on.</p> <i><p>Jason:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Well if they all agree, it&#8217;s like Congress, if they all vote for it then OK I guess you should do that. Of course, even then, maybe not. That&#8217;s pretty good. What do you think, Hamid?</p> <i><p>Hamid:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Well, I think you should get lobbyists if you&#8217;re comparing them to Congress. The customers can get lobbyists for their features.</p> <i><p>Nick:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;We can use lobbyists, actually, to change some things.</p> <i><p>Hamid:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;No, I think that&#8217;s great advice. I don&#8217;t have anything to add to that.</p> <i><p>Announcer:</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Thanks for listening to Smart Bear Live with Jason Cohen. Be sure to visit Jason&#8217;s blog at asmartbear.com for more episodes, and if you would like to ask a question of Jason in a future Smart Bear Live, please register at smartbearlive.com.<br
/><hr/><p><a
href="http://is.gd/Q4qUkW"><b>Sign up for AppSumo</b></a>'s daily deals specifically for web geeks &amp; entrepreneurs.</p><p
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		<item>
		<title>3 Custom Optimization Tips for Your Shopping Cart</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Software-Business-Blog/~3/fKSiG6Ah8RA/</link>
		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Software-Business-Blog/~3/fKSiG6Ah8RA/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2012 14:33:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Claudiu Murariu</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cart flow customization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[custom language optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecommerce shopping cart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[optimization tips for shopping cart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[optimizing your shopping cart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shopping cart best practices]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shopping cart optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shopping cart tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.avangate.com/?p=3333</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Shopping cart optimization can result in easily measurable, lucrative results, mainly because:


there is clear buying intent for the users that get to the shopping cart;
the goal of the optimization is very clear and straightforward: increase revenue.


I always say that if you are not continuously optimizing your eCommerce shopping cart, you are leaving money on the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Shopping cart optimization can result in easily measurable, lucrative results, mainly because:</p>
<div id="_mcePaste">
<ul>
<li>there is clear buying intent for the users that get to the shopping cart;</li>
<li>the goal of the optimization is very clear and straightforward: increase revenue.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p>I always say that if you are not continuously optimizing your eCommerce shopping cart, you are leaving money on the table. Lots of money, most of the time!</p>
<p>So, if you are new to the ecommerce game and you want to start optimizing right away, here is where you should start from: <a href="http://www.avangate.com/docs/en/whitepapers/Avangate_Shopping_Cart_Best_practices_-_2012.pdf">Shopping cart best practices </a>whitepaper.</p>
<p>If you are not new to the game and want to go a few steps further, here are 3 of the methods of optimization that will do you a great deal of good.</p>
<p><strong>Custom language optimization</strong></p>
<p>Let me tell you an insider tip from Avangate: languages can generate large conversion rate differences when compared. Translations of the cart are regularly checked and improved and payment methods are added to make sure all user needs are covered. However that is not enough to get the most out of each language.</p>
<p>But maybe I am not saying anything new to you. You already know that just translating your website in different languages won’t get you the same performance for each language. If you want better results you need to think of each language as being more than just just a translation.</p>
<p>The same goes for the shopping cart. Each language should be treated as a standalone optimization target. This way you optimize independently for each language, because the optimizations for English won’t produce the same conversion rate results for other languages as well.</p>
<p>If you use Avangate, treating each language independently is easy. You can have radical designs based on the user behavior of any of the 30 languages we offer our cart in.</p>
<p><strong>Customize the cart flow</strong></p>
<p>For some website, the purchase funnel starts on their website while for others the purchase funnel is included in the 3rd party shopping cart. In both scenarios you need to treat the whole funnel as a whole.</p>
<p>If after clicking the Buy now or Upgrade buttons on your website, people are redirected to another page (e.g. to select options or versions of the product they’re buying, to create an account, etc.) you need to make sure that when they get to the 3rd party cart they won’t have to go through a large number of steps.</p>
<p>For this we launched inside Avangate the “One step cart without review” purchase flow. In other words, people get to the 3rd party cart, fill in billing and credit card data and they are done.</p>
<p>If they already have an account on your website and you know part or all of their billing data, make sure they don’t need to fill it again inside your 3rd party cart. If you want to do this with Avangate, just write to your account manager.</p>
<p><strong>Switch to custom domain</strong></p>
<p>If your website is an established one in the market and you own a brand that your visitors trust, make sure that your 3rd party shopping cart loads on a secure subdomain of your choice. Make sure to get in touch with your account manager and ask for it.</p>
<p>I’m a big advocate of custom domains. They offer a flawless experience to your visitors: from their point of view, since they never leave your website. That adds to the trust and feeling of security, which are crucial when it comes to buying online.</p>
<p>Custom domains make the <a href="http://blog.avangate.com/end-of-your-web-analytics-problems/">tracking of visitors behavior in Google Analytics</a> much easier and more accurate. And you know, without accurate data, you’ll just be optimizing blindfolded.</p>
<p>As the saying goes: Keep optimizing, my friends!</p>
<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Software-Business-Blog/~4/fKSiG6Ah8RA" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Poker Copilot 3.10 Now Available</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/CZEqpSwDmWU/poker-copilot-310-now-available.html</link>
		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/CZEqpSwDmWU/poker-copilot-310-now-available.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 May 2012 11:32:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Steve McLeod</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microisvcentral.com/?guid=5896ef8308ad7305275760814ce71381</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Poker Copilot 3.10 is now available to download.Unfortunately the auto-updater embedded in 3.09 is not working correctly, so you'll need to do this update manually.What's changed:New statistics: VPIP by position.New statistics: Preflop Raised by positi...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Poker Copilot 3.10 is now available to download.</p><p>Unfortunately<strong> the auto-updater embedded in 3.09 is not working correctly</strong>, so you'll need to do this update manually.</p><p><strong>What's changed:</strong></p><ul><li>New statistics: VPIP by position.</li><li>New statistics: Preflop Raised by position.</li><li>New statistics: Aggression Frequency by street.</li><li>You can filter for Zoom Poker hands (More -&gt; Zoom Poker Only).</li><li>Small tweaks and bug fixes.</li></ul><p><strong>Known problem:</strong></p><ul><li>PartyPoker hands can't be reliably imported into Poker Copilot. There are several problems in PartyPoker's hand history file on Mac OS X.</li></ul><p><strong>This update needs to update your database. </strong>To see the new stats for your historical data, use "Tools" -&gt; "Recalculate Statistics" in Poker Copilot's menu.</p><p><strong>Update Instructions:</strong></p><ol><li><a href="http://static.pokercopilot.com/pokercopilot3.10.dmg?s=blog">Download the latest version here</a>.</li><li>Open the downloaded file.</li><li>Drag the Poker Copilot icon to the Applications icon. If prompted to replace an existing version, confirm that you do want to replace.</li></ol><p>Now you are done and ready to hit the tables.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7415921575638169343-8229162086087229268?l=blog.pokercopilot.com' alt='' /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~4/CZEqpSwDmWU" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>6 Tips to Activate Stagnant Affiliates</title>
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		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Software-Business-Blog/~3/YxTt31eB9vI/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2012 11:42:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cristi Miculi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Affiliate Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate programs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate sales]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliate system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[idle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reactivate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software affiliate programs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.avangate.com/?p=3278</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[See some of the reasons why affiliates become inactive and check out 6 ideas on how to address this from the merchant's point of view.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There isn&#8217;t a single merchant on this world selling through affiliate programs that hasn&#8217;t got idle affiliates. These are affiliates that are not active, meaning that <strong>they don&#8217;t generate any sales or, worst case, they don&#8217;t even refer traffic for the merchant (no exposure for the merchant&#8217;s products</strong>). When labeling an affiliate as &#8220;inactive&#8221; from the time&#8217;s point of view, you should take into consideration his sales history (if any) &#8211; the frequency / amount of sales he was generating at one point &#8211; and also the type of product / services you sell through them. In the software vertical, for example, an affiliate promoting consumer software get inactive quicker than an affiliate promoting enterprise products.</p>
<p><strong>Why do some affiliates become inactive?</strong></p>
<p><span>In order to activate an inactive software affiliate it&#8217;s best to address the issues they&#8217;re having. From what we&#8217;ve seen so far, the most frequent reasons why some affiliates have periods of time in which they don&#8217;t perform are:</span></p>
<ul>
<li>missing the tools to promote your products &#8211; e.g. for coupon affiliates you must provide them with a coupon;</li>
<li>affiliate joins the merchant&#8217;s program but it takes a while until he actually starts promoting the products online;</li>
<li>search engine algorithm updates impact their traffic / SEO efforts &#8211; Google Panda is most popular;</li>
<li>affiliate finds another product to promote with better conditions &#8211; higher commission, special promotions, easier to sell product;</li>
<li>lack of targeted traffic on the affiliate&#8217;s website.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>How can I activate affiliates?</strong></p>
<p>Here are 6 ideas to activate idle affiliates:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Proactive approach: keep your affiliates close to you from the beginning &#8211; </strong>even if it could mean a lot of time spent for speaking with them, it&#8217;s worth it. You will be able to know what happened directly from them and help them better engage their traffic with your products. Send them a personal welcome message once they join your affiliate program and <a href="http://www.amnavigator.com/blog/2012/01/26/proactive-affiliate-management-and-communication/">keep the communication open</a> with them periodically. The newsletters are a good option for the mass of affiliates, but for your top affiliate a constant personal email approach is recommended.</li>
<li><strong>Incentivize affiliates for each little step taken into promoting your products &#8211; </strong>you may offer a flat commission percentage to begin with to which you can add increments of 5% to the commission for: sending an email back to you with an URL where they promote your product on your website, giving you feedback about your products after they test them, featuring your products on the page that gets the most relevant traffic, recommending your products on the homepage, etc. A good example for this is how <a href="http://www.vso-software.fr/affiliate.php#commission">VSO Software</a> does it.</li>
<li><strong>Run sales contests within your affiliate programs but set realistic goals &#8211; </strong>the idea is to get those latent affiliates to start selling, so you might just want to address them. You have a flying pig&#8217;s chance to get things moving for inactive affiliates by setting a goal of &#8220;10,000 sales to reach within a week&#8221;. The way we&#8217;ve seen it work is to take a look at your sales numbers distribution among affiliates and set the goal to reach somewhere in the middle for inactive affiliates. Don&#8217;t forget to send at least a reminder for the contest to your latent affiliates.</li>
<li><strong>Cash bonuses and special affiliate conditions work best &#8211; </strong>a recent survey we&#8217;ve been running inside our <a href="http://www.avangate.com/affiliates">affiliate network</a> shows that 45% of affiliates think that the most appealing prizes in a contest is money. And we can extend that even further if we&#8217;re talking about inactive affiliates &#8211; they need the cash to keep things rolling, further invest in PPC for example, etc. The second most appealing prize would be getting special conditions from the merchant: increased commissions, exclusive products, etc. This applies to the more experienced affiliates.</li>
<li><strong>Generate exclusive discount coupons for them to use &#8211; </strong>coupons are a great way to accelerate sales, especially in the software vertical, where there&#8217;s no physical or delivery cost involved. Some latent affiliates can be motivated by sending them time limited discount coupons. Try to also include the affiliate&#8217;s website / name in the coupon / coupon description &#8211; vanity coupons; affiliates really like those.</li>
<li><strong>Offer affiliates the chance to test your products themselves &#8211; </strong>there are lots of content affiliate websites nowadays which use reviews as their primary way of promoting products to their audiences. Sending them a fully functional version of your product can help accelerate the reviewing process, thus the listing on their websites. This is especially useful when you notice that potentially good affiliates are still inactive.</li>
</ol>
<p>I&#8217;ve also seen some merchants using negative motivation to try and activate affiliates &#8211; sending &#8220;ultimatum-type&#8221; emails, getting the affiliate commission lower than the default one and so on. I don&#8217;t recommend that mainly because in 99% of the cases it didn&#8217;t work &#8211; I think mostly because there are always alternatives to your products / services on the market which they can pick up and get better conditions. Here are <a href="http://blog.affiliatetip.com/archives/20-affiliate-program-management-mistakes-to-avoid/">more mistakes you should avoid</a> when dealing with affiliates.</p>
<p>Did <strong>you</strong> try activating your latent affiliates? What else did you do?</p>
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		<title>Crushing the Microstakes and Poker Copilot&#8217;s HUD</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/Ul8ZVzPsLSw/crushing-microstakes-and-poker-copilot.html</link>
		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/Ul8ZVzPsLSw/crushing-microstakes-and-poker-copilot.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 May 2012 15:21:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Steve McLeod</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microisvcentral.com/?guid=bc69bdb28b6760cd615f663828a241c9</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Crushing the Microstakes is the name of an e-book I just finished reading. Highly recommended. It's written by Nathan Williams, a person who has done exactly what the title of the book says. It's also formatted to be read on a computer screen - large f...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.blackrain79.com/p/book.html">Crushing the Microstakes</a> is the name of an e-book I just finished reading. Highly recommended. It's written by Nathan Williams, a person who has done exactly what the title of the book says. It's also formatted to be read on a computer screen - large fonts, in a PDF in landscape orientation.</p><p>Here is Nathan's recommend HUD setup for playing microstakes cash games:</p><ul><li>Voluntarily put money in the pot</li><li>Preflop raised</li><li>Aggression Factor <em>(although I think Aggression Frequency is a better option)</em></li><li>Number of hands played</li><li>Continuation bet (flop)</li><li>Fold to continuation bet (flop)</li><li>Continuation bet (turn)</li><li>Fold to continuation bet (turn)</li><li>3-bet preflop</li><li>Fold to 3-bet preflop</li></ul><div>Here's how that looks in Poker Copilot:</div><p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-uZDadzJRCr0/T6qLRdKGf7I/AAAAAAAABDU/yEe41kcELxw/Screen%252520Shot%2525202012-05-09%252520at%2525205.20.08%252520PM.png?imgmax=800" alt="Screen Shot 2012 05 09 at 5 20 08 PM" width="500" height="268" border="0" /></p><p> </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7415921575638169343-7689186648813356042?l=blog.pokercopilot.com' alt='' /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~4/Ul8ZVzPsLSw" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>A new field guide for entrepreneurs of all stripes</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/startup/lessons/learned/~3/TUw0yt0Rbp0/new-field-guide-for-entrepreneurs-of.html</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 09 May 2012 14:38:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Unknown</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, authors of&#160;The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development&#160;are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.





It's been j...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<i>TLDR: <a href="http://market-by-numbers.com/">Brant Cooper</a> and <a href="http://vlaskovits.com/">Patrick Vlaskovits</a>, authors of&nbsp;<a href="http://custdev.com/">The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development</a>&nbsp;are back with a new book called <a href="http://ericri.es/LeanEnt">The Lean Entrepreneur</a>. Illustrations by <a href="http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2011/11/startup-is-vision.html">FAKEGRIMLOCK</a>. You can <a href="http://ericri.es/LeanEnt">pre-order it starting today</a>.</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xom8zK7B810/T6nX0o1TEKI/AAAAAAAABX8/J-bhEyAjpcA/s1600/TEASER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Teaser for the surprise announcement later in the post...." border="0" height="133" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xom8zK7B810/T6nX0o1TEKI/AAAAAAAABX8/J-bhEyAjpcA/s200/TEASER.jpg" title="Teaser" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
It's been just about two years since&nbsp;<a href="http://market-by-numbers.com/">Brant Cooper</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://vlaskovits.com/">Patrick Vlaskovits</a>&nbsp;released their self-published book&nbsp;<a href="http://custdev.com/">The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development</a>&nbsp;(you can see my original&nbsp;<a href="http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/07/entrepreneurs-guide-to-customer.html">review here</a>). It took the idea of <a href="http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/what-is-customer-development.html">Customer Development</a> and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Since then, Brant and Patrick have been tireless advocates for the whole Lean Startup movement. From <a href="http://leanstartupmachine.com/">Lean Startup Machine</a>, <a href="http://www.meetup.com/Los-Angeles-Lean-Startup-Circle/">Lean LA</a> and <a href="http://www.meetup.com/SanDiego-Tech-Founders/">San Diego Tech Founders</a>, to countless speeches and workshops, I have seen the impact that their leadership has had first hand.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lh-llq2dS6s/T6AYo_IR7AI/AAAAAAAAAE8/ywVmzP-yaKc/s1600/cooper_r5_Page_05.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lh-llq2dS6s/T6AYo_IR7AI/AAAAAAAAAE8/ywVmzP-yaKc/s320/cooper_r5_Page_05.png" width="320" /></a></div>
There continues to be an incredible demand out there for actionable, practical lessons in how to apply this emerging set of ideas.<br />
<br />
Today I am excited to be able to share&nbsp;that Brant and Patrick have taken a big step in meeting that need. They are launching their next book, a true field guide for entrepreneurs, called&nbsp;<a href="http://ericri.es/LeanEnt">The Lean Entrepreneur: How to Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets</a>. It will be published by Wiley this fall. And you can <a href="http://ericri.es/LeanEnt">pre-order it starting today</a>.<br />
<br />
Brant and Patrick have set out to write and design a book that not only describes&nbsp;practical steps for implementing Lean Startup principles in your innovative&nbsp;endeavors – but to inspire your creativity as well by sharing diverse examples of&nbsp;what works, and more importantly, what often doesn’t work.<br />
<br />
Their goal is to share stories of Lean Startup applied in many industries and domains outside of&nbsp;tech startups. While I got my start as a technology entrepreneur, I have always&nbsp;felt that industries such as <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/%202012/03/lean-startup-publishing-eric-ries.html">traditional book publishing</a> or <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%5Bhttp%3A/%20/www.startuplessonslearned.com/2011/10/case-study-nordstrom-innovation-%20lab.html">Fortune 500 retailing</a>&nbsp;will reap huge competitive advantages by adopting Lean Startup approaches.<br />
<br />
Brant and Patrick strongly believe, like I do, that these principles will serve innovators of all types, whatever their industry. Wherever innovators and entrepreneurs face extreme&nbsp;uncertainty -- &nbsp;be it in social entrepreneurship or developing a new musical artist or&nbsp;a machine-vision startup -- a principles-based approach can help.<br />
<br />
To that end, they've refined their thinking and have incorporated feedback about&nbsp;The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development into&nbsp;<a href="http://leanentrepreneur.co/">The Lean Entrepreneur</a>. They’ve also augmented their writing with research&nbsp;and interviews, collecting the stories of dozens of entrepreneurs who are now&nbsp;applying Lean Startup thinking to all sorts of ventures, ranging from music and&nbsp;artist development: Legendary music producer Marti Frederiksen (Aerosmith, Def&nbsp;Leppard, Fuel, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne), to finance and investment: Dave&nbsp;McClure of 500 Startups to apparel and ecommerce: Chris Lindland, Founder of&nbsp;BetaBrand to automotive manufacturing: Danny Kim, Founder of Litmotors, and&nbsp;of course, technology startups such as Lucas Carlson of AppFog, Hiten Shah of&nbsp;KISSmetrics, Nathan Oostendorp of Ingenuitas and many others.<br />
<br />
These interviews, nuggets, hacks, insights and case studies have been abstracted&nbsp;into actionable tactics for entrepreneurs of all stripes.<br />
<br />
The book is still in production, so I haven't seen the whole thing yet. But I've been impressed with what I've seen so far. To whet your appetite, I asked Brant and Patrick for permission to share a few excerpts from the draft manuscript. They are below, followed by one last surprise announcement.<br />
<br />
<i>In this excerpt from <a href="http://leanentrepreneur.co/">The Lean Entrepreneur</a>, by&nbsp;using fishing as an analogy, Brant and Patrick reveal how market segmentation influences your&nbsp;business model and why “For Whom” is as important as “What” to build.</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Market segments drive your business model. The process of segmenting your&nbsp;market is one of the poorest understood concepts in the business startup world,&nbsp;yet is one of the most powerful.&nbsp;The market segment you pursue is inextricably linked to the other aspects of your&nbsp;business model.&nbsp;
<br />
<br />
Segments determine how future customers will expect to interact with the&nbsp;product, how they will be marketed to, and their method of purchasing.&nbsp;Differences in how people are reached, their expectations of the buying process,&nbsp;how their trust is earned, the price point they’ll accept, what distribution&nbsp;methods are most efficient, the messaging that attracts them -- all these factors&nbsp;(and more) may represent different sub-segments.&nbsp;
<br />
<br />
A good way to think about market segment is by thinking about fishing.&nbsp;
<br />
<br />
In the kelp beds off the coast of Southern California, one can find thousands of&nbsp;species of fish, but two of the most sought after by commercial fishermen are the&nbsp;California Halibut and the White Seabass. Both fish are classified as “demersal”,&nbsp;meaning they live near or on the bottom of the ocean floor and catching fish of&nbsp;both species in the 20-30 lb pound range is not uncommon.<br />
<br />
Halbut are flatfish. They make themselves effectively invisible by nestling into the&nbsp;sandy bottoms between patches of eel grass and when sardines swim by, they&nbsp;explode out of the sand to nab them. They have two eyes on one side of their&nbsp;body, which make them very adept at ambushing predators. Fishermen know&nbsp;that one of best baits for catching halibut is a fellow denizen of sandy bottoms,&nbsp;the lizardfish.&nbsp;
<br />
<br />
White seabass are long and cylindrical, and have a much more typical “fish” form.&nbsp;They cruise the kelp beds looking for squid or mackerel to eat. White seabass are&nbsp;very difficult to hunt with spear guns as they are very sensitive to noise, and the&nbsp;slightest inorganic noise will set them off.&nbsp;
<br />
<br />
Any amateur fisherman can throw a line off the end of the local pier baited with&nbsp;frozen squid and pull in a few mackerel, or maybe even a rockfish.<br />
<br />
But commercial fishermen have to -- day in, day out -- in good weather or in bad -- acquire their target fish and then sell it for more than cost of catching it. To do&nbsp;that repeatedly and scalably, they have to develop a deep understanding of the&nbsp;ethology of the fish. They must learn what sort of bait to use with what tackle,&nbsp;the best time of day and what environment will maximize the potential to catch&nbsp;the particular fish they are looking for. Fish can only be caught when they are&nbsp;accessible -- it doesn’t help you to know that there are fish 1,000 feet below your&nbsp;boat, if your line cannot get down to depth.<br />
<br />
What are the value propositions, benefits and the messaging (bait), the pricing&nbsp;structure and channels (tackle), and length of sales cycle (how likely a fish will&nbsp;snap your line)? Will you need a big net (full-page ads in the WSJ) to catch lots of&nbsp;small sardines? Or will you need to staff and finance a whaling ship to be out at&nbsp;sea for months at a time to catch two or three whales (enterprise sales model)?&nbsp;Or perhaps you need to chum (freemium) the waters a bit? Maybe you’ll be&nbsp;hunting on a reef with a spear gun for 20lb groupers (B2B sales at a conference)?<br />
<br />
You can build a mobile app for senior citizens, launch a Facebook campaign&nbsp;targeting Fortune 100 CEOs, or charge $25 for a food cart hamburger if you’d like,&nbsp;but the mismatch between product, tactic, pricing and segment might delay that&nbsp;Hawaiian vacation you’ve been planning.<br />
<br />
It may seem rather obvious, but as with many aspects of entrepreneurship,&nbsp;the practice of segmenting your market seems commonsensical, but is more&nbsp;complicated than it seems to put into practice. And the problem is that few take&nbsp;the time to really master it.<br />
<br />
Entrepreneurs carry market segments around in the back of their minds, relying&nbsp;on gut-feel to determine whether customers they are seeing are the “right”&nbsp;customers. The problem is when you’re chasing revenue; any and all customers&nbsp;will seem like the right customer.</blockquote>
<i>In another excerpt from <a href="http://leanentrepreneur.co/">The Lean Entrepreneur</a>,&nbsp;Brant and Patrick describe BetaBrand’s fast, iterative, and MVP-driven approach&nbsp;to manufacturing and selling apparel.</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Traditionally, the clothing industry is seasonal. Two to four times a year, large&nbsp;clothing companies release products to the world and eventually the make their&nbsp;way online, but it's an old-fashioned industry that moves at old-fashioned speed&nbsp;compared to the ways people interact with companies on the Internet.<br />
<br />
But that's not what founder Chris Lindland had in mind for BetaBrand, an online&nbsp;clothing company. Not an online clothing catalog, mind you, but a clothing&nbsp;company. Chris explains:<br />
<br />
“What I figured is that an online clothing company has to abide by the rules of&nbsp;blogging or Twitter, which people expect when interacting with companies online.&nbsp;The idea with BetaBrand is we're going to try to put up products as rapidly as we&nbsp;can.<br />
<br />
In order to save on our costs we decided to make those batches very small and as&nbsp;a result of making small batches you can iterate on them if anything is successful.&nbsp;It was a fairly organic thing. It was really done to control our costs to begin with,&nbsp;but it's become a fascinating way to actually improve upon products as we go&nbsp;along."<br />
<br />
Like Continuous Deployment, whereby IMVU deployed changes to their web&nbsp;application +50 times per day, BetaBrand's aim is to put out a new product every&nbsp;day. They manufacture only a small batch of a particular product, but enough to&nbsp;come to a decision point:<br />
<br />
“If there's anything that we've learned from our customers, it's that with the first&nbsp;hundred to two hundred pair sold, we can make minor changes on it to improve it&nbsp;and retest, we can turn it into an entire line, or we can kill it.”</blockquote>
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Reprinted from <a href="http://leanentrepreneur.co/">The Lean Entrepreneur</a> by Brant&nbsp;Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits. Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley &amp; Sons, Inc.&nbsp;Reprinted by permission of John Wiley &amp; Sons, Inc.</span><br />
<br />
And, these days, no book launch announcement would be complete without a funny book trailer to go with it. Want to know what "Christopher Walken" thinks about The Lean Entrepreneur?<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4A2taQhChGo" width="480"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<hr />
<br />
<br />
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, Brant and Patrick tell me that The Lean&nbsp;Entrepreneur will be heavily visual, filled with full-color illustrations of the&nbsp;concepts they're explaining. To that end, they've teamed up with the most unique&nbsp;startup artist there is...my favorite robot dinosaur, <a href="http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2011/11/startup-is-vision.html">FAKEGRIMLOCK</a>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ericri.es/LeanEnt"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3q9KKDeL7Uo/T6nXdbtw2zI/AAAAAAAABX0/EwLyRINltKE/s400/MARKET+SEGMENTATION+IDEA+08.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OzS3HBHlk6A/T6rXdF7pnaI/AAAAAAAABYM/MxevYDsGbMU/s1600/THISHOWWRITEBOOK01-800.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OzS3HBHlk6A/T6rXdF7pnaI/AAAAAAAABYM/MxevYDsGbMU/s400/THISHOWWRITEBOOK01-800.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
If that doesn't convince you pre-order, you're probably beyond help. But just in case you are right on the fence, and want one more reason to do it, you should know that&nbsp;Brant and&nbsp;Patrick are partnering with LA-based crowdfunding startup&nbsp;<a href="http://invested.in/">Invested.in</a>, to let early adopters of their book become part of co-creating it.&nbsp;If you pre-order&nbsp;<a href="http://leanentrepreneur.co/">The Lean Entrepreneur</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;from them,&nbsp;they'll list your name as a co-creator in the book and share material with you as&nbsp;they write.<br />
<br />
The Lean Entrepreneur will be published by Wiley this Fall. You can order it on&nbsp;<a href="http://ericri.es/LeanEnt">Amazon</a>.&nbsp;But I suggest you pre-order it at<a href="http://custdev.com/The-Lean-Entrepreneur/"> LeanEntrepreneur.co</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?a=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:uiR-8M2vLG4"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?i=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:uiR-8M2vLG4" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?a=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?a=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?i=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?a=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?i=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?a=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?a=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/startup/lessons/learned?i=TUw0yt0Rbp0:aCkml8-8beU:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/startup/lessons/learned/~4/TUw0yt0Rbp0" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
<enclosure url="" length="" type="" />
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		<item>
		<title>Early Access Version of the next Poker Copilot Update</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/yV5BYiYzzwo/early-access-version-of-next-poker.html</link>
		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/yV5BYiYzzwo/early-access-version-of-next-poker.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2012 14:40:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Steve McLeod</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microisvcentral.com/?guid=59b7be0f22669ee1863682fd0b8800a1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you want to try out all the delicious new statistics coming to the next Poker Copilot update, you can have a sneak preview already. Download and install this update to try out the stats. Go to the "Advanced Statistics" Dashboard, and then on the too...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If you want to try out all the delicious new statistics coming to the next Poker Copilot update, you can have a sneak preview already. <a href="http://static.pokercopilot.com/pokercopilot3.10_rc1.dmg">Download and install this update</a> to try out the stats. Go to the "Advanced Statistics" Dashboard, and then on the toolbar, click on the new "Show statistics by position" View button.</p><p>All of the new statistics can be added to the HUD, using the preferences.</p><p>Upon opening this update for the first time Poker Copilot will update your database. This may take some time.</p><p>Please post feedback in the <a href="http://forum.pokercopilot.com/categories/general">Poker Copilot discussion forum</a>.</p><p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-b1Yvnjdns4M/T6kwn6cotvI/AAAAAAAABDA/NTsH-XU-aGA/Screen%252520Shot%2525202012-05-08%252520at%2525204.41.01%252520PM.png?imgmax=800" alt="Screen Shot 2012 05 08 at 4 41 01 PM" width="600" height="567" border="0" /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7415921575638169343-2673868914895280201?l=blog.pokercopilot.com' alt='' /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~4/yV5BYiYzzwo" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>How do I stop “analyzing” and pick between two good choices?</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/smartbear/~3/RAM4CiWzgTg/business-tiebreaker.html</link>
		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/smartbear/~3/RAM4CiWzgTg/business-tiebreaker.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 May 2012 13:45:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jason</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mailbag]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.asmartbear.com/?p=658</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What if there's no wrong answer? What's the tiebreaker in major business decisions.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><iframe
src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://blog.asmartbear.com/business-tiebreaker.html&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=80&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=25" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:80px; height:25px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe> <script type="text/javascript">tweetmeme_url = "http://blog.asmartbear.com/business-tiebreaker.html";
tweetmeme_source = 'asmartbear';
tweetmeme_service = 'bit.ly';</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script> </p><img
style="float:right; margin: 0 0 2ex 2em;" src="http://asmartbear.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/airmail.jpg" width="150" height="183"><p><i>This is part of an ongoing <a
href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/category/mailbag" >startup advice series</a> where I answer (anonymized!) questions from readers, like a written version of <a
href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/category/sblive" >Smart Bear Live</a>. <b>To get your question answered</b>, email me at </i><code>asmartbear -at- shortmail -dot- com</code>.</p><p>Embarras de Choix writes:</p><blockquote
style="border-left:2px solid #FF6633; padding-left: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><p>I have a startup with thirty paying customers. We&#8217;ve been bootstrapping up to this point.</p><p>I think there&#8217;s a big opportunity to raise money, but also I could continue as I have been. I don&#8217;t know way to go.</p><p>I already know the pros and cons of the decision, so don&#8217;t lecture me about that. I just don&#8217;t know how to pick!</p></blockquote><p>This is one of those few dilemmas where there&#8217;s no wrong answer. So, whichever you choose, never let anyone else make you feel guilty about not choosing the other.</p><p>But &#8220;there&#8217;s no wrong answer&#8221; doesn&#8217;t answer the question.</p><p>Asking for more advice from other people probably won&#8217;t resolve it. While I was bootstrapping <a
href="http://wpengine.com/?a_aid=asmartbear">WP Engine</a> I constantly heard that we&#8217;re hamstrung by not taking an investment; after raising a Series A a different set of people expressed their disappointment that I had &#8220;sold out.&#8221;</p><p>Who&#8217;s right? Both. Neither. This is why you cannot look externally for the answer.</p><p>Every day you delay the decision is costing you. Dithering doesn&#8217;t move you closer to either goal&nbsp;&#8212; it&#8217;s draining time and energy from whatever is actually valuable, and it&#8217;s blocking other decisions about spending money, hiring, your lifestyle, stories for the press, features, everything.</p><p>So you need a fast decision, and other people cannot give you the answer. That leaves you, alone.</p><p><strong>What kind of company sounds like the most fun to build?</strong></p><p>Do you like working alone or with a very small team? Does hiring ten people in the next 12 months sound exhilarating or depressing? Do you like having a hand in everything or would you rather be evangelizing and leading? Do you enjoy carefully, slowly growing a backyard garden or would you have more fun strapping on an afterburner and seeing just how much of an impact you can have on the Earth? Do you like being good at what you&#8217;re good at now or do you want to learn how to run a completely different kind of business?</p><p>Are you proud of bootstrapping? Do you enjoy the balance in the conversation when you tell that to someone funded, tacitly saying &#8220;I&#8217;m in control, I don&#8217;t need help, I have a product so good people actually pay for it?&#8221; Or does it make you feel small, knowing you&#8217;re not growing as fast as you could, not making as much reach as you could, not making as much money as you could?</p><p>What sounds like fun? Yes, <em>fun</em>. Enjoyable. Fulfilling. This is your yardstick.</p><p>I think fulfillment and joy barely enter into the calculus for most founders, and that&#8217;s a mistake. Why build a company&nbsp;&#8212; or anything else for that matter&nbsp;&#8212; if it&#8217;s not fulfilling?</p><p>You&#8217;re in an enviable and rare condition in that both of your options are valid and rational in every way, and that means you get to pick based something we all really ought be valuing, but lack either the means or courage to do so.</p><p>But you can.</p><p>And remember, five years from now when you look back on this with hindsight, you still won&#8217;t know which one would have been &#8220;right.&#8221; Even if the path you picked &#8220;failed&#8221; in some objective sense, you still won&#8217;t know that the other necessarily would have been &#8220;better&#8221;&nbsp;&#8212; more money, more fulfilling, happier, whatever.</p><p>P.S. Other people <em>can</em> help, in that they can help ask you more questions. But only you can decide the answer.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><b><i>Add your advice to the <a
href="http://blog.asmartbear.com/business-tiebreaker.html#respond">discussion section</a>!</i></b></p><hr/><p><a
href="http://is.gd/Q4qUkW"><b>Sign up for AppSumo</b></a>'s daily deals specifically for web geeks &amp; entrepreneurs.</p><p
class="float:right; margin-left:3em;"><iframe
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		<title>An experiment with Pinterest</title>
		<link>http://successfulsoftware.net/2012/05/07/an-experiment-with-pinterest/</link>
		<comments>http://successfulsoftware.net/2012/05/07/an-experiment-with-pinterest/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 May 2012 18:00:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andy Brice</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[experiment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[microISV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[outsourcing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pinterest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://successfulsoftware.net/?p=5282</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Pinterest is the latest darling on the social media scene. Pinterest reportedly hit ten million monthly unique visitors faster than any other website. It is currently claimed to have some 15 million users. Basically it allows you assemble (&#8216;pin&#8217;) images from anywhere on the web into themed folders (&#8216;pinboards&#8217;). You can download browser plug-ins that [...]<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=successfulsoftware.net&#38;blog=938101&#38;post=5282&#38;subd=successfulsoftware&#38;ref=&#38;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-5299" style="margin:5px;" title="Pinterest logo" src="http://successfulsoftware.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pinterest-logo.png?w=500" alt=""   />Pinterest is the latest darling on the social media scene. Pinterest reportedly hit ten million monthly unique visitors faster than any other website. It is currently claimed to have some 15 million users. Basically it allows you assemble (&#8216;pin&#8217;) images from anywhere on the web into themed folders (&#8216;pinboards&#8217;). You can download browser plug-ins that allow you to pin an image from a website to one of your pinboards in a few clicks. The social element comes from &#8216;following&#8217; other Pinterest users and commenting on and re-pinning their images. It is a simple idea slickly executed. The emphasis on images makes it rather different to Facebook, Twitter and other social media brands.</p>
<p>83% of US users of Pinterest are women and typical pinboard themes include:&nbsp; fashion, funny images of cats, interior design, places to visit, food and wedding ideas. Check the <a href="http://pinterest.com/">Pinterest home page</a> to see a sample of images currently being pinned. The interest in weddings is particularly relevant to me as I sell <a href="http://www.perfecttableplan.com/html/weddings_and_celebrations.html">wedding seating planner software</a>. So I started to create some wedding reception themed pinboards as an experiment. I quickly decided that scouring the web for pictures of pretty seating charts, place cards&nbsp; and wedding cakes wasn&#8217;t a) a good use of my time b) the right thing for a 46 year old heterosexual man to be doing (GRRR!). So, using <a href="http://www.odesk.com">outsourcing site odesk.com</a>, I found a nice lady in the Philippines to do it for me for a very reasonable hourly rate. She also (unsurprisingly) proved to have much better taste than me. I think she also really quite enjoyed herself! The resulting Pinterest pinboard is at <a href="http://pinterest.com/tableplan/">http://pinterest.com/tableplan/</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://successfulsoftware.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pinterest.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5288" title="pinterest" src="http://successfulsoftware.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pinterest.png?w=500&#038;h=265" alt="" width="500" height="265" /></a></p>
<p>Here is some data from my little experiment:</p>
<table style="text-align:left;width:100%;" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Cost:</td>
<td>approx $50, plus a few hours of my time</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Total &#8216;pins&#8217; to date:</td>
<td>551</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Clickthroughs to <a href="http://www.perfecttableplan.com/">http://www.perfecttableplan.com/</a>:</td>
<td>154</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Avg time on site:</td>
<td>0:42</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Bounce rate:</td>
<td>75%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Traceable sales (from analytics and <a href="http://successfulsoftware.net/2008/08/17/cookie-tracking-for-profit-and-pleasure/">cookie tracking</a>):</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>So that works out &gt;$0.30 per click for not very targeted traffic (as shown by the bounce rate and avg time on site) and not a single sale. Not very encouraging. What&#8217;s worse, it only generated traffic while new pins were being added. As soon as new pins were no longer being added the clickthroughs fell off a cliff:</p>
<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5287" title="pinterest traffic" src="http://successfulsoftware.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pinterest-traffic.png?w=500" alt=""   /></p>
<p>I may get some SEO benefit. But Pinterest isn&#8217;t looking a like a win for me. Also there are issues with Pinterest terms and general IP issues. Pinterest&#8217;s terms originally claimed that they could <a href="http://blog.pinterest.com/post/19799177970/pinterest-updated-terms">sell anything you pinned</a>. They have since amended that to <a href="http://pinterest.com/about/terms/">something more sensible</a>. But pinning images you don&#8217;t own the copyright to is still problematic. I think most sites will be happy for people to pin their images, as long as they are correctly attributed &#8211; it is free advertising for them.&nbsp; And it is obvious that most Pinterest users are happily pinning images without any thought about copyright. But it could conceivably get you into trouble for <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/03/21/pinterest-copyright-legal-issues/">copyright infringement</a>.</p>
<p>If you are a big name company with a big marketing budget, it may be worth putting some effort into Pinterest. Especially if you already have a big catalogue of images you own. But, based on my experiences, I think most small software companies can find better ways to spend their time.</p>
<br />Filed under: <a href='http://successfulsoftware.net/category/marketing/'>marketing</a>, <a href='http://successfulsoftware.net/category/microisv/'>microISV</a> Tagged: <a href='http://successfulsoftware.net/tag/experiment/'>experiment</a>, <a href='http://successfulsoftware.net/tag/marketing/'>marketing</a>, <a href='http://successfulsoftware.net/tag/outsourcing/'>outsourcing</a>, <a href='http://successfulsoftware.net/tag/pinterest/'>pinterest</a>, <a href='http://successfulsoftware.net/tag/software/'>software</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/" /></a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/successfulsoftware.wordpress.com/5282/" /></a> <img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=successfulsoftware.net&#038;blog=938101&%23038;post=5282&%23038;subd=successfulsoftware&%23038;ref=&%23038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></content:encoded>
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<enclosure url="http://successfulsoftware.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/pinterest-traffic.png" length="" type="" />
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		<title>How many hands do I need for Poker Copilot&#8217;s HUD to be reliable</title>
		<link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/BDadTe4XRdA/how-many-hands-do-i-need-for-poker.html</link>
		<comments>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~3/BDadTe4XRdA/how-many-hands-do-i-need-for-poker.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 May 2012 11:42:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Steve McLeod</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[planet]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://microisvcentral.com/?guid=b87ff73503860056e28119f6d80af0ef</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is question you MUST be asking as a Poker Copilot user: can I trust the HUD data for a specific player? The answer is, it depends on how many hands you have AND which statistic you are looking at.Most statistics in Poker Copilot are calculated by ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This is question you MUST be asking as a Poker Copilot user: can I trust the HUD data for a specific player? The answer is, it depends on how many hands you have AND which statistic you are looking at.</p><p>Most statistics in Poker Copilot are calculated by dividing a numerator by a denominator. For example, Voluntarily Put $ in Pot (VPiP) is calculated as follows:</p><pre class="formula" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; font-family: monospace; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 15px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">Voluntarily put $ in pot % = </pre><pre class="formula" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; font-family: monospace; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 15px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">       times voluntarily put $ in pot * 100 </pre><pre class="formula" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; font-family: monospace; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 15px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">       / hands played</pre><p>If you've played 20 to 25 hands or so, you can consider this to be statistically significant. This is why Poker Copilot's HUD initially shows statistics for a new player in grey, only switching to full-colour after you've collected 25 hands against that player.</p><p>The calculation for Folded to Four-bet Preflop (F4B) is</p><pre class="formula" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; font-family: monospace; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 15px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">Folded to four-bet preflop % = </pre><pre class="formula" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; font-family: monospace; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 15px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">       times folded to four-bet preflop * 100 </pre><pre class="formula" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 50px; font-family: monospace; font-size: 15px; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 15px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; padding: 0px;">       / number of opportunities to fold to<br />    four-bet preflop</pre><p>For this to be as statistically significant  as VPiP after 25 hands, you need to play enough hands for the denominator to be &gt;= 25. That is, 25 opportunities to fold to a preflop 4bet. How many hands is that? At full-ring microstakes No-Limit Hold'em, probably around 4500 hands.</p><p>As such I consider a stat such as F4B to be far more useful for analysing your own game, rather than making a decision about a villain. Before you made a decision based on an opponent's F4B stat you should definitely click on their HUD panel to bring up the pop-up panel which has full information. In dark grey you'll see the numbers behind the stat. Make sure that the denominator is at least 20 or so before using the stat to make a critical decision.</p><p><img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-WxfPptceqQ8/T6exEevwjMI/AAAAAAAABC0/XcYXVFf5ABU/Screen%252520Shot%2525202012-05-07%252520at%2525201.23.42%252520PM.png?imgmax=800" alt="Screen Shot 2012 05 07 at 1 23 42 PM" width="307" height="600" border="0" /></p><p> </p><p>You can see in the screenshot above that after 1,100 hands, that all the denominators are large enough except for "Folded to four-bet preflop", "Folded big blind to steal attempt", and "Folded to continuation bet on turn". Here is a good rule of thumb for full-ring No Limit Hold'em for the most important stats:</p><p><strong>Stats reliable after 25 hands: Voluntarily put $ in pot (VPIP),  Preflop raised (PFR)</strong></p><p><strong>Stats reliable after 150 hands: Aggression (Agg), Three-bet preflop (3bet)</strong></p><p><strong>Stats reliable after 500 hands: Continuation bet on flop (CBET), Folded to three-bet preflop (F3B)</strong></p><p><strong>Stats reliable after 1000 hands: Continuation bet on turn (TCBET), Four-bet preflop (F4B)</strong></p><p>With less than this, be cautious, double-check the denominators, and use your own judgement about the player based on the stats that already are statistically significant.</p><p>In 6-max and heads-up, these statistics will become statistically significant quicker.</p><p> </p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7415921575638169343-4237206159013199019?l=blog.pokercopilot.com' alt='' /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/KeepSoftwareSimple/~4/BDadTe4XRdA" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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